


Breath Control

by Larathia



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:04:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3420359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larathia/pseuds/Larathia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a boy, Jamie would have been trained to be a piper, but...have you ever heard bagpipes played by someone who didn't know how?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath Control

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nam_jai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nam_jai/gifts).



There is no polite way to learn to play the bagpipes.

This was something every McCrimmon knew; if you weren't in the process of learning, yourself? You'd already gone through it or had to sit in hearing range of someone who was. Pipers all, an honorable position if you could get the hang of the blasted things, and a kind of warfare all its own while you were learning. There were those - mostly southerners - who thought a bagpipe sounded broadly akin to strangling a dozen cats.

But you knew when you'd got it right, too. The skirling of the pipes was a stirring call to arms and became, in all ways, the sound of home. 

Of course, you had to get past the stage where you knew who could hear your practicing by how many shoes you'd had thrown at your head, first. It was considered a fair part of the training that you had to learn how to maintain breath control while ducking. You had to maintain breath control through _anything_ , that was the point. Even in battle. Keep the bag full, the pressure on it even, so that the tone of the pipes didn't change.

Jamie'd found a spot on top of the goat-pen that was _largely_ safe from boots, which was good, because from any elevation sound tended to carry pretty well. And goats were pretty straightforward about what they did and didn't like, and how they demonstrated it, which meant being out of reach was a good thing on that front, too.

He was just...short of _breath_ today. The pipes wailed like a grand piano being attacked slowly with razorblades as he let the bag deflate, coughing into his hand. Drat it. And he couldn't remember how the middle eight bridge was supposed to go, either. The notes kept sounding -

"Oy lad. You get those pipes out o' that straw this _minute_ ," called his father's voice from the house - a piper's lungs could really carry. 

Jamie got as far as "Sorry," before another coughing fit caught him while trying to gather up the instrument. By the time he'd gotten the drones gathered up and everything sorted and came down from the pen's roof, his father was at the door waiting for him, arms crossed on his chest.

"Now, put it away, _proper_ ," his father ordered. 

This took rather longer, but it was the first drill he'd learned; how to take the pipes out and assemble them, how to disassemble them, clean them, and put them away. Bagpipes could be quite difficult to replace. Far more difficult than replacing pipers, sometimes. But Jamie felt odd, light and heavy, and the coughing interfered. Not that he was inclined to say anything, because if he did, he'd spend the next two weeks repeating the drill for assembling and disassembling. He might even be told to help repair older drones, which meant some very odd smelling liquids and not a lot of fresh air.

As he clicked the case closed and stood up, his father's strong hand caught him under the chin, forcing him to look up into his father's face. He felt his head being turned this way and that.

"How long were ye _up_ there, lad?" asked the man, frowning. "I only got back half an hour ago or so."

"Dunno," said Jamie, frowning. "Went up after breakfast. Wanted to get the Braes o' Killiecrankie down..." he paused. His father didn't much like sentences with a 'but' in them, and the rest of that was 'but I forgot how to put my fingers on the chanter and spent the rest of the day trying to remember'.

For reasons beyond Jamie's fathoming, but which probably had to do with his father being able to tell a fever when he saw one, he was somewhat gently shooed inside. "We'll go over it after you've had a rest, boy."

After Jamie'd wobbily run inside, bagpipe case in hands, his father shook his head. _All day_ on top of the goat pen trying to remember one song. That boy'd make a damn good piper, someday. If he didn't go for soldier instead.


End file.
